Lydall, Inc. - Automotive EDI and Release Accounting using Oracle 11i

Lydall, Inc. designs and manufactures a range of specialty-engineered products for thermal/acoustical and filtration/separation applications.

The Lydall Thermal/Acoustical Group develops innovative cost-effective solutions for critical automotive systems. Sophisticated thermal modeling capabilities and superior testing facilities help automotive design engineers identify, analyze and solve complex heat management, vibration and acoustical issues in the early stages of the automotive design cycle. End products include under-hood, under-body and interior components and sub-components delivered to Automotive OEM’s and suppliers.

The automotive industry has historically been an innovative leader in supply chain management. Electronic Data Interchange (EDI) technology and Web based inventory management requirements facilitated by OEM based Just-In-Time (JIT) and Lean manufacturing initiatives have continually pressured automotive suppliers to automate business systems and processes within their own organizations.

Lydall’s three U.S. based manufacturing facilities serve many automotive customers, including Ford, General Motors, Daimler-Chrysler, Lear, Collins & Aikman, Isuzu, Mitsubishi, Volvo, Venture, and Arvin-Meritor.

THE CHALLENGE

As Lydall’s customers plan their own manufacturing requirements, they will, on a regular basis, generate via EDI, forecast (using the 830/DELFOR release EDI transaction set) and 862/DELJIT daily shipping requirements for Lydall products. A compilation of the requirements from all of Lydall’s customers is used by Oracle manufacturing modules to forecast, plan, schedule and execute the manufacturing and shipping requirements Lydall must meet to satisfy the production needs of its customers. And for each shipment, to each customer, Lydall must transmit the details of that shipment (856/DESADV) so their customer can recognize what products
will be arriving where and when, again for its own planning purposes. While on the surface this appears to be a straightforward process, the intricacies of the data format of each customers inbound EDI transmissions, the difference in packaging and shipping requirements, and the data required for outbound ASN’s essentially mean that a custom business process must be established for each customer. Those business processes may also vary by individual customer ship-to locations, making the internal data processing and manufacturing execution
requirements even more complex.

THE SOLUTION

Lydall has been using Oracle Applications to manage its financial and accounting requirements for several years. In June 2001, Lydall began implementing Oracle release 11i with the addition of the manufacturing and distribution suite of products. Use of Oracle’s Release Management Module, R*EDI, from Radley Corporation, and services from Radley’s Automotive Consulting Group, enable Lydall to meet the unique and demanding requirements of their automotive customers.

R*EDI provides the communications, translation and mapping functionality required to retrieve the EDI data transmitted by Lydall’s trading partners and map it into the Oracle Applications e-Commerce gateway transaction sets. Using a scheduling utility, R*EDI automatically retrieves the data for each customer without human intervention, typically at off - hours. R*EDI translates the data and generates an interface file and automatically submits a concurrent request to process the inbound transaction. The data is validated based upon predefined business rules established within the Oracle’s Release Management module. An inbound material release (830) typically contains several weeks’ worth of requirements. A predefined amount of o update the forecasting module within Oracle. Firm requirements are then used to populate the Order these requirements are used to update the forecasting module within Oracle. Firm requirements are then used to populate the Order Management module and define the manufacturing and shipping requirements for the coming week(s). The daily ship schedules (862) received from customers refines the shipping requirements to meet each customer’s daily production requirements.

The ability to manage the differences in trading partner EDI processing is provided by Oracle’s Trading Partner Architecture Toolkit. But the key to success is a thorough understanding of each trading partner’s data formats and mapping them appropriately. This is where Radley’s extensive automotive experience added significant value to the software tools we have discussed. For example, each trading partner has different requirements for the turn-around data required for outbound EDI documents sent. Oracle Applications accommodates a significant
amount of this data using pre-defined database table columns. Where these columns for a data element do notexist, specialized flex fields, as well as standard Oracle Applications Flex Fields, are used to store the data until needed for outbound transmission. Understanding the specific trading partner requirements and the tools used within the Oracle Applications to automate them is vital to a successful implementation.

Once the scheduled orders have been executed through the manufacturing process, shipping execution begins. Shipments are staged, confirmed, loaded, and the vehicle pulls away from loading dock. Then comes the last step of the shipping process, which is "closing the Trip", in the Oracle Shipping Execution module. At that point, an interface file (DSNO) is generated and Radley’s Outbound Automation sends it to R*EDI. After ASN compliance validation, the outbound document is generated (which includes detailed shipping data extracted from the Shipping Execution module and the previously mentioned turn-around data stored in flex fields) and transmitted to the trading partner.

Oracle Applications has then updated the appropriate sales order lines, inventory, and updates the cumulative per part shipment (CUM) quantity within the Release Management Module. All that is left is for accounts receivable to invoice the customer shipment and the business cycle completes.

TODAY

Lydall Corporation has successfully implemented and deployed this solution in three of their U.S. Automotive Thermo-Acoustical facilities. This effort has also expanded to their European operations, where the Thermo-Acoustical group is establishing a new facility in St. Nazaire, France, bringing additional business requirements to be met, such as different EDI standards (ODETTE, VDA), transaction sets, language, and time zones. The systems implementation efforts are currently underway using the existing U.S.-based solution footprint. This new facility is expected to be fully operational by the end of first quarter 2004.

In addition, Lydall recently upgraded their Oracle Applications from 11.5.5 to 11.5.8, and is currently implementing Oracle Process Manufacturing at the Rochester facility in NH.
Throughout all these business challenges and organizational changes, Radley Corporation has been the selected EDI partner of Lydall Corporation